


Tactus

by toomuchplor



Series: Tactus Verse [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-22
Updated: 2007-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 01:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Have you </i>seen<i> that Czech kid you flagged to do Gerontius? I seriously don't think he's left the third-floor bathroom since you told him he has five days to learn an eighty-page score."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tactus

**Author's Note:**

> Self-indulgent music AU.

"It's my final paper, and it's _huge_ , and I _have to_ do well on it," explains Simpson, eyes wide.

"Unfortunate," answers Rodney neatly, and flips a page in the octavo in front of him.

"So I won't be at rehearsal tomorrow?" she finishes, not quite managing to make it a statement of fact.

"Yes, you will," says Rodney, much more confidently, still not looking up.

"But this paper," she begins, almost immediately heading for tears. Goddamn overly emotional undergraduate singers.

"Which you should have started working on months ago," Rodney tells her, viciously circling a forte dynamic marking in the bass line, "especially knowing that you were going to be focusing all your energies on singing the part of the Angel later in the term."

"But, Dr. McKay, you only assigned the parts yesterday," she says. "And the concert's on Saturday. You can't expect that we'll have time to devote to --"

"Did I or did I not," snaps Rodney, finally bringing his gaze up to meet Simpson's, "tell the entire choir that I would not be choosing soloists until the eleventh hour? And that everyone should therefore learn the part appropriate to their voice type as part of their preparations for _Gerontius_?"

Simpson bites her lip and blinks hard. "I didn't think you'd choose _me_ , sir," she manages weakly.

"Of course I chose you," Rodney sighs, exasperated. "You're the only mezzo whose vibrato doesn't give me vertigo."

She struggles with a happy blush, then stammers a thank you. Typical. One word of faint praise for the voice and a singer will do anything you ask.

"Tomorrow at one," Rodney orders.

Simpson nods and is halfway to his office door before she remembers her paper. She pauses, shoulders going stiff.

"Go," Rodney says, exasperated. "I'll talk to him for you."

* * *

John says, simply, "Office hours," when McKay comes through his door. John is in the middle of explaining the difference between _wishing_ something to be true and _doing the research_ to support that wish, and his master's student (17th century Japanese music notation and the development of the koto lyric song) was finally beginning to grasp the concept when McKay barged in.

"Oh, good," says McKay, obliviously self-important. He claps his hand down on Stackhouse's shoulder. "Go away," he tells him briefly, and Stackhouse lumbers to his feet, all too happy to oblige.

"If you don't cite the source of every single half-assed claim you make on the next paper," says John hastily, seizing his last chance to make an impression, "I'll have you take Bibliography and Research Methods again."

Stackhouse blanches and backs into the wall in his haste to escape this fate. "No, John, I'll be more careful."

McKay plops down into Stackhouse's vacated chair. "You're making my Angel weep," he tells John bitterly.

Since said weeping Angel had visited John's office not an hour earlier, pleading her case, John can't feign ignorance. He tries anyway. "But my seventh grade health teacher told me it was normal and healthy to touch myself down there," he says, deadpan.

McKay snorts and puts his feet on John's desk, knocking a pair of Thai cymbals to the ground. "Listen, you have to give her an extension on the paper. All this sobbing is putting undue stress on her crico-arytenoid ligaments."

"If you had bothered to choose your soloists three months ago, like a normal person," says John, grouchy, "then I wouldn't have this problem either. Have you _seen_ that Czech kid you flagged to do Gerontius? I seriously don't think he's left the third-floor bathroom since you told him he has five days to learn an eighty-page score."

"Radek's perfectly capable," begins McKay, then flaps his hand, dismissing the emotional trauma he's inflicted on the school's best emerging tenor voice. "That's not the point. The point is that Simpson needs another week before she hands in her paper on Balinese monkey chants and the hegemony of British rule."

"The emergence of be-bop in post-war America," John corrects automatically. "She's in History of Jazz, not Intro to Ethno."

"Whatever," says McKay. "Like any of these idiot savants have the slightest capability of learning actual facts and applying them to actual music."

"Simpson is very bright," says John defensively, then deflates almost immediately with the knowledge that he's just implied that all his other undergrads are less than bright. The worst part is that it's true. There's nothing more frustrating than being a musicology prof at a music school that prides itself on turning out great performers. It's like -- like being expected to teach Shakespeare to marines at West Point.

"Next Friday," McKay bargains. "Don't make me take this to Elizabeth. You know what she'll say."

Elizabeth will, of course, diplomatically and patiently pretend to hear John's (totally valid and reasonable) arguments, then firmly take McKay's (irrational and ridiculous) side. After all, some of the school's biggest donors will be attending Saturday's performance and they don't usually throw money at well-researched papers on be-bop or koto music. They do, however, throw money at glowing young mezzo-sopranos in glittering diva dresses and pompous twenty-three year old braying tenors who are likely winners in the next round of the Met auditions.

McKay presses his lips together and sighs shortly. "Look, you know as well as I do that if I didn't force these kids to read scores and apply their knowledge of performance practice without the benefit of that weaselly little vocal coach Kavanagh holding their useless hands every step of the way, none of our singers would graduate with any musicianship skills whatsoever. All _Herr Direktor von Opera_ Caldwell cares about are the four kids who might possibly make it big, but -- call me crazy -- I think that as a _school of music_ we should make a point of giving _all_ our singers some chance of supporting themselves through teaching after they graduate. And in order to do that," rants McKay, pulling his feet down as he reaches the pinnacle of his daily explosion, "I have to occasionally put the fear of God into their vain, ridiculous little singer hearts! They have to learn to _read music_ , Dr. Sheppard!"

"Fine. Friday," John says, defeated, his ears ringing.

"Very good," says McKay, rising to his feet. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and explain to Beckett about teaching his moronic violas to count."

* * *

The Demons' Chorus sounds exactly like hell.

"No!" shouts Rodney, and wishes he had a baton to throw. Unfortunately, the first orchestral rehearsal isn't until tonight, and for now he's conducting commando-style, bare hands not nearly powerful enough to wring the correct notes and phrasing from the university's supposedly top-tier vocal ensemble. "Listen! All of you!" When he looks up from his orchestral score, he sees that every one of the singers is staring ferociously down at their scores, ears flaming. The few singers who can read (and by corollary, aren't great singers) have their shoulders squared with indignation towards their fellow section-mates, but by and large, the atmosphere is one of fervently hoping McKay won't --

"Kusanagi," Rodney bellows, and points to the front of the stage. Kusanagi shakily rises from the soprano section and shuffles forward. "Emmagen! Dex!" The alto and bass come forward as well, flipping through their scores while they wait in silent horror. A tenor, Rodney still needs a tenor -- "Lorne!"

Once assembled, the quartet huddles together for mutual support in their hour of terror -- all but Dex, the cocky little asswipe. He stands alone at the edge of the group, lackadaisically scanning the bass line of his completely unmarked score. Rodney chose him on purpose, knowing that he'd make the rest of the quartet look that much worse, but he doesn't need to be so obvious about it.

"Letter B. And go!" Rodney shouts, giving Dex the benefit of a 2, 3, before stabbing his way into the demon chorus with his right index finger. Dex bellows his way through the opening subject with his usual precision -- the kid's actually an engineering major, but has pipes of titanium and perfect pitch besides, so Rodney decided to piss off the entire undergraduate contingent of bass voices and flag Dex as the Priest -- before the rest of the quartet shames itself with the exclamation of the word 'gods!' on all the wrong notes.

"Wrong!" says Rodney, and sticks his fingers in his hair, despairing. "It's a fucking minor triad! Don't even get me started on the butchery you all made of the fugue."

"Not like they'll hear us over the brass anyway," says Dex with typically annoying perspicacity.

"Sit down and shut up," Rodney snaps. Kusanagi breaks into tears -- sopranos! -- and Lorne offers her a sympathetic pat on the back as they return to their chairs. The rest of the choir looks defeated by the failure of their peers, and looking them over, Rodney feels frantic, the familiar urge to impart _music_ with mere _words_ washing over him. "Listen," he says, his voice dropping in pitch and volume as he lays his hand flat on the page in front of him, obscuring the irrelevant details. "Listen, you guys. This whole chorus is -- it's fantastic. It rolls along, it boils under the surface, it bubbles and seethes and scalds." The music's started playing back in Rodney's mind, stems and noteheads hot under his palm, and with the music, the words flow: "You have to bite each syllable, let it explode with rage, let every note breathe fire! Say 'aside thrust'!"

The choir obediently echoes him, giving the words about a quarter of his own vim.

"Aside thrust!" Rodney tries again, hissing and narrow-eyed, feeling the demon within.

They repeat the words, unconsciously leaning forward in their seats, suddenly making intent eye contact with him, buying in.

"Sheer might!" Rodney essays, opening and closing his fingers in the direction of his own mouth to show the deliciousness of the consonants.

They get closer this time, and some of them have begun to grimace with demonic energy. Closer.

"Canting groaners," sneers Rodney derisively, and they jeer back at him, then burst into nervous laughter when Rodney lets the demon mask drop abruptly with an unwilling smile and shout of triumph. "Yes! All right! That! That intensity, that anger, exactly that! Again, from letter B, and two, three!"

It's magnificent this time, notes flowing, tone edging in and out of metallic brightness in all the right places, Rodney conducting the entire thing without looking down, shoulders squared forward and the score uncoiling like a live thing in his gut. They finish the chorus, fading away at the end, and Rodney swipes a hand through his hair again, which is sticking up on end by now. "That," he says precisely, "was almost good enough. Now go home."

The choir bursts into a hysterical cheer and clears the hall still grinning like maniacs.

Rodney, finding himself alone on the podium, flips the score closed and lets the singing of the violins slowly drain out of his body, leaving his forearms loose and human again.

* * *

The school's been seized by Elgar fever. Even with over three hundred music students, there are few who aren't involved in Saturday's concert in one way or another. It's a late Romantic work after all, enough instruments in the orchestra alone to choke twenty Baroque composers, never mind the massive numbers of singers required to scream over the vast sea of brass. Still, if John hears one more person whistling or humming "Santus Fortis" (the only part of the entire score which is singable, John allows), he's going to start throwing his African gourd shakers out into the corridor like percussive grenades. He didn't spend twelve years in Ghana studying with a master drummer only to drown in a sea of overblown Victorian English chromaticism at the age of thirty-eight.

"God, save me from the dead European Romantics," prays John fervently, and resumes digging around for his biggest, loudest djembe.

"We've had this discussion before," says McKay dryly, appearing in John's office doorway. "You always take things so personally. It's not like Elgar set out to _hurt_ music."

"No, he just wanted to teach it a lesson," smirks John, and greets McKay with a cupped palm on the edge of the drumhead. It rings like a thunderclap in the small room, and McKay winces and scowls.

"You're just bitter because you can't sell out the concert hall for your little recreations of Egyptian fertility rituals with the painted faces and the waxing poetic about women menstruating," says McKay. He's making himself comfortable, already holding a Peruvian bird whistle in one fist while studying the stacks of ethnomusicology journals on John's shelves. He is not, however, emitting any noises that might be described as Brahmsian, so John decides he can stay.

"Sold out?" John echoes, taking the bait.

"Not yet. Close enough, with the door sales," says McKay absently. "You coming?"

John snorts.

"Oh come on," says McKay, exasperated. "I sat through your entire Indian ensemble's concert last semester and that was like, three _hours_ of you hitting drums while some kid attempted to play sitar."

"That's how Indian music works," says John, not pouting.

"All I'm saying is that it wouldn't kill you to come and show some support," McKay says. "You know. For Simpson."

"Yeah, I'm sure she'll be aware of my personal support when she's looking out into the dark hall full of hundreds of people," John returns. "McKay, I'd rather sit through the entire Ring cycle again than listen to a performance of _Dream of Gerontius_."

"Hmm," grunts McKay, apparently unmoved by John's dramatic declaration. "Well, I'll leave you to your rain dances then."

"I'm thinking that if I can find the right tala," says John, tapping out a polyrhythm on the rim of the drumhead, "I can induce spontaneous menstruation in all your sopranos. Since I'm an expert in Egyptian fertility rituals and all."

"Don't even joke about that," says McKay, grimacing as he heads for the door. "Do you know what that _does_ to female vocal folds?"

Ten minutes later, John notices that McKay took the Peruvian bird whistle with him.

* * *

"The only time," Rodney says, watching the melee of tuxes and black gowns backstage, "that I despair of the fate of the human race is when I watch a choir try to line up before a performance."

They laugh obligingly, even though Rodney wasn't trying to be funny, and eventually settle into their concert order with only minimal shouting from Rodney. He glances down the rows while the soprano section leader hisses at everyone to hold their black folders _right_ (as if Rodney gave a crap), then catches Radek's eye. The tenor is in fine form, having emerged from the third floor washroom two days earlier with his entire part memorized. He looks small and impossibly wiry, but Rodney's heard the kid sing with mind-altering volume and he knows this will be the last year any of them will get to hear Radek perform for free.

Simpson is alight with excitement, in a distinctly unangelic corseted red satin gown with her hair twisted up in a complicated knot. Beside her, Dex is yawning, probably doing fluid dynamics problems inside that interestingly left-brained head, apparently unaware that he's the envy of every bass-baritone in the entire school.

"All right, everyone," Rodney declaims, and silence descends as the singers crane to hear his words of wisdom. "Try not to fuck up."

He's always been great with the pre-concert pep talks.

* * *

John slouches down in his seat and nods inanely while Kavanagh yammers on about how McKay nearly destroyed his life this week by choosing his soloists mere days before the performance. On his other side, Dr. Beckett's twitching, clearly dreading the prospect of an hour and half of someone else conducting his orchestra. Weir's up in the box seats on the left, courting four of the school's biggest patrons and talking up young Zelenka's prospects in the hopes of increasing their contributions. Caldwell's with her, oily and charming as usual. John rubs his temples and wonders if anyone will ever consider giving him a TA to help with the three courses he's got every semester as the only ethno prof in the school.

Then Miko walks on stage and starts tuning the orchestra, and John sighs with momentary relief as Kavanagh shuts up. The relief is short-lived, however, because the next moment, McKay's strutting out onto the stage, bowing at the podium, shaking Miko's hand, lifting his baton -- the arrogant shit doesn't have a score in front of him, John notes wearily -- and beginning ninety minutes of John's personal hell.

About ten minutes in, John gets obsessed with watching Simpson breathe, the way her narrow girlish ribcage swells impossibly and strains against the confines of her dress until John's sure she's going to explode out of the red satin, only instead she sings impossibly long rich phrases while Radek twitches with poorly masked impatience.

John tries to keep thinking about the elaborate façade of Western music performance, the spectacle and the pomposity of it all, the ridiculous and arcane rituals, but instead he keeps getting distracted by instants of unexpected beauty -- not in the music (which is hideous and keeps getting worse) -- but in the performance itself: Simpson's unforeseen skill and the silver edge of her voice, Radek's small but mighty presence unfurling into sheer sound waves that make the pulse in John's neck flutter in sympathetic resonance, the perfect shine of the brass section (making Beckett square his shoulders and sigh happily), and most of all, McKay's flying baton: its afterimages trailing under the bright lights, glowing and gliding and seeming impossibly fluid for a piece of carved painted wood.

John knows, of course, that McKay is very very good. He's seen McKay conduct dozens of times, has sat through several performances like this one and watched with detached interest as McKay manipulated the bizarre alchemy between conductor and ensemble to draw music out of the air. And though John likes to infuriate the hell out of McKay by telling him that conducting is the pursuit of the least talented musical performers, that it's merely a nineteenth century construct meant to play on the cult of the personality and signifying nothing in the way of actual artistry, John knows that McKay is -- very good.

Tonight, John suspects, McKay is more than very good. Tonight he seems to be nearly the genius he professes he is. And so John watches McKay's baton, his free left hand, square and expressive, and ignores the music as best he can, focusing instead on the space around the podium. John thinks about the eastern belief that music is not artistry of sound, but of time. Seeing the places between McKay's beats, the loft of the air in between tacti, John understands for the first time that western music can be the same.

At intermission, Kavanagh gripes about the bass-baritone soloist being a mere engineering student and how McKay is so goddamn anti-political that he'd compromise the performance for the sake of some pot-smoking dreadlocked math jockey, who, okay, is a _decent_ singer but hardly the kind of singer who has earned this opportunity, who --

John folds his hands together, palm to palm, and rests his chin on the points of his fingers, letting Kavanagh's ranting roll over him like a continuation of Elgar's horrible music.

* * *

On Monday morning, Rodney staggers out of his eight o'clock orchestration seminar and into the cafeteria across the quad from the music building. He butts in line ahead of two bassoon majors and demands coffee and a cinnamon bun before throwing himself down at one of the cleaner tables.

He's halfway through his cinnamon bun before he realizes that Sheppard is sitting across from him. "I think," Rodney muses aloud, waking up, "that I just told my orchestration class that the vibraphone is a member of the brass family."

"I guess a brass one could be," allows Sheppard, sipping his coffee slowly and flipping through the student newspaper spread in front of him.

"It's okay, I'm pretty sure most of them were asleep when I said it," Rodney comforts himself. "I need another cinnamon bun." He does. It's bleak and raining outside and now that the Elgar's over, Rodney feels empty and exhausted and purposeless. Cinnamon buns are the only cure. He glances around and spots Simpson in line at the counter. "Simpson!" he calls. "Get one for me!"

"You're at least going to pay her for that, right?" prompts Sheppard.

"Of course not," says Rodney. "Hey, Caldwell has his DMA students out in the quad walking his fucking dog until it takes a crap. I'm not that bad by comparison."

Simpson drops a cinnamon bun in front of Rodney and holds out her palm expectantly.

"Some Angel you are," says Rodney bitterly, but hands her two dollars anyway.

"Thanks, sir!" she chirps, and smiles sidelong at Sheppard. "And thanks for coming on Saturday, Dr. Sheppard. It was good to see you there."

She walks away while Rodney is still gaping across at Sheppard.

Sheppard's frowning down at his paper again, pretending not to notice the way Rodney's staring.

"You came to the Elgar?" Rodney asks, disbelieving.

"Figured I might as well," says Sheppard casually, as though he hadn't compared Elgar to a drill through the skull every day for the last two months. "The Iranian Community Association cancelled their workshop, so I --"

"You came to my concert," says Rodney, trying not to gloat and failing miserably.

Sheppard rolls his eyes and looks up. "Yes, and it was total crap. Elgar had better be suffering in hell to the soundtrack of his own pompous Eurocentric meandering BS if only because of what I went through on Saturday night."

"You came to my concert," Rodney says again, more softly.

Sheppard takes a breath, obviously about to snipe about something else he found objectionable, but seems to stop himself before he can start. Two blinks, and then he meets Rodney's searching gaze. "Well, it's just that -- you always come to mine."

Rodney feels his jawline grow hot as the flush spreads down his face, but he doesn't let himself look away. "Well, I can hardly properly appreciate the true masterworks of the canon," he blusters, fully aware that he's not quite pulling it off, "unless I subject myself to the occasional evening of aural torment by way of comparison."

"Then I guess I just realized that it goes both ways," Sheppard replies, and smiles before reaching across the table and stealing part of Rodney's cinnamon bun. Perhaps seeing something dangerous flash in Rodney's gaze at this outright theft, Sheppard hurriedly adds, "Did I ever tell you about my pan-cultural theory of music? It's based on the idea that music is the manipulation of time, not of sound--"

Rodney makes a face and downs the last of his coffee. "Is this the part where you tell me that Bach was stealing directly from the tribal musics of Polynesia?"

"Well, if you compare the opening fugue subject of _Das Wohltempierte Klavier_ to some recently-collected chants from a tiny island near Tahiti," begins Sheppard, leaning back in his chair, "there is some damning evidence suggesting that Bach was little more than a culturally-appropriating talentless hack."

"Or," interjects Rodney, pointing a finger at Sheppard, " _or_ the Tahitian natives owe the Bach estate an absolute fortune in royalties."

"Don't even get me started on the Western idea of music as a commodity," growls Sheppard, and when he goes to take another piece of Rodney's cinnamon bun, Rodney grabs his fingers and holds onto them. Sheppard freezes, stills, and then his palm turns so that he can stroke his thumb over Rodney's knuckles. "You did good, though," Sheppard continues, matter-of-fact, looking down at their joined hands. "With the waving of the arms. On Saturday."

Rodney is looking at their hands, too, distracted to the point that he barely hears his own reply. All he can think, seeing his fingers intertwined with Sheppard's, feeling the sweep of his drum-callused fingertips over Rodney's soft unseasoned hands, is that they look good together.


End file.
